The Problem
by Rose Stetson
Summary: Ahren, Prince Consort of France, has a problem he refuses to share even though it's breaking him. Takes place after the bonus epilogue from The Crown.


"Give me one of those."

The gardener's eyes widened as he stared at me. "Your Highness, are you—are you sure?"

"Darn right, I'm sure," I said as I rolled up my shirt sleeves. "You have a dead tree that needs to be cut down? I have two hands. How hard could this be?"

There was some hesitation in the gardener's eyes as he held the axe in his hand. "Your Highness, I don't mean any disrespect, but you've never done—you've never even been interested in—this kind of work before." He grimaced. "And that was before you moved to France."

I scowled as I wrenched the axe away from the man. He was so stunned that he let go almost immediately.

There was a small piece of me that was pleased with his fear.

There was a much larger piece of me that was disappointed in myself for having used my influence to intimidate a man who was only thinking of my safety.

I looked at the tree in front of me as I pulled off my bowtie and dropped it to the ground. Another tug to unbutton my shirt collar, and I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

I raised the axe and swung.

"I don't think that's such a great idea."

A strong hand held the axe back mid-swing, and I looked back at the person behind me. If that gardener thought he was going to stop me, he had another thing coming.

I blinked when I saw General Leger standing there, easily holding the wooden handle of the axe behind me.

"General!"

"Your Highness, you're an adult," he said with a sardonic chuckle. "I think you can call me Aspen."

He inhaled as he extracted the axe from my hand and leaned on it as if his bad leg was suddenly bothering him again. "You want to explain to me why you suddenly felt like cutting down a tree?" He studied me. "Not exactly your field of expertise."

I rolled my eyes. "Nothing. I just—I thought I'd get a good work-out."

"By attempting to amputate your own leg," Aspen said with a nod as if he was agreeing with me.

The rage simmered inside me at his mocking. "I think I can manage this a bit better than you think I can!" I snapped.

"Kid, you forget that I've known you since birth," he said, unfazed by my outburst. "Now, do you want to tell me what's got you so eager to cut down a tree? Or am I going to have to hold onto this a little longer?"

I sighed, my whole body deflating like a balloon with the sound. "Look, General, I—I'm fine."

"I'm the one who coined that phrase," he said with a shake of his head. "And the pride behind it is one of the reasons your parents met and got married."

I whipped my head around. "Wait—what?"

He let out a long, slow breath. "I was one of the people who kind of encouraged your mother to enter the Selection."

My eyebrows shot up and nearly hit the top of my hairline. "Are you kidding me?"

"No." He shook his head. "But about the time that I met Lucy. About the time we really started dreaming of staring a life together, I started to realize I didn't have to do it all alone." He bit the inside of his cheek before he looked over at me. "I think it's probably time you learned the same lesson." He steeled his posture, standing straight up again. "Now, one more time. What's wrong?"

"Aspen, trust me," I said with a shake of my head as I leaned down to the grass and gathered up my bow tie. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

I moved to walk back to the palace. I'd have to find some other way to deal with my frustration.

He raised an eyebrow and cocked his head in my direction. "You might have changed since you up and got married, but I don't think you've changed nearly as much as you want me to believe. Ahren Schreave usually says he's fine most often when he's definitely not."

I thought back to the party I had left suddenly. I thought of why I had left so suddenly.

The pain ripped through my heart like a knife, and I was immediately eager again to take up the axe again. I needed to destroy something. I needed to break it into a thousand tiny pieces. Preferably with my bare hands.

"You left during the family's luncheon," the General said with a small sigh. "You don't think that was a little conspicuous?"

I ran my fingers through my hair. Eadlyn had tapped her glass to get everyone's attention. Eikko had wrapped his arm around her waist. It was the last day before Kaden and Josie left on their honeymoon. It was the last day before Camille and I went back to France.

"Everyone was swarming around Eadlyn and Eikko," I said with a shake of my head. "I doubt they even noticed I left."

The general frowned at me. "If that's true, why am I here?"

"You're a soldier," I said as if it should be obvious why he of all people would have noticed my absence. "It's your job to watch things that look out of place."

He offered a slight nod to the side as if he conceded my point, but I didn't think I was going to win the argument that easily.

"Look, can I just have the axe now?" I asked, making another pass for it.

Once again, it was just out of my reach.

"Not until you admit what's really bothering you," he said with a shake of his head.

"You know I love Kerrtu," I began slowly.

He nodded. "She's an imp. An adorable little imp, but an imp nonetheless."

A ghost of a smile seemed to spread over my lips. "And I'm so glad that Eikko and Eadlyn found their happily ever after. I mean, I'm the one who kind of pushed her to actually give it a shot."

Once again, he nodded as if this didn't surprise him.

"But—I don't know—I just—seeing Eadlyn and her perfect, little happy family. I mean, for as long as I've known her, she thought marriage and childrearing was a little too—I don't know—mundane for her." I was still dancing around it, and I could see in Aspen's eyes that he was starting to get a little more impatient.

"She fell in love," he said with a shrug. "It happens."

Thoughts of Camille flooded my thoughts, the way she smiled when I walked into a room, the way she smelled when she got out of the bath, the way her hair always spread across my chest in the morning.

"So did I, but—"

Aspen studied me as my voice died out. "Trouble in paradise?"

I shook my head. "No."

I wasn't lying exactly. There weren't any problems between Camille and me. We were soulmates. I couldn't see that changing any time soon.

But there was something which had started to hang between us, something neither of us could do anything about. And it scared me.

"Something tells me that you're not telling me everything," Aspen said with a knowing look.

I sighed. "Eadlyn wasn't supposed to be the only one making an announcement this trip."

The General's eyes grew serious and understanding, and he stopped leaning on the axe. "Oh."

To my surprise, he gave me the piece of hardware. The moment it was in my hands, however, I just stared at it.

"Is Camille—?"

I could read the concern in his eyes, the understanding, as he asked the question.

"Physically? She's fine," I admitted as I mustered a smile. "But it's been a rough few weeks."

The General offered me a grim smile and he patted my shoulder as if he couldn't trust himself to say anything to comfort me.

Truthfully, it was the most helpful thing I could have imagined.

"Do—" His voice caught for a moment before he inhaled and began again. "Do your parents know?"

I shook my head. "Camille's mother knows, but I don't know—with the wedding and now Eadlyn's news, we haven't found the right time."

He nodded, his eyes distant as if he was lost in thought.

"Was this—was this the first time?" he asked, his eyes searching my face.

I hesitated before I shook my head. "When we got married, we thought we had all the time in the world. I mean, we weren't under the same pressure Eadlyn was to produce an heir. It's not like Camille was Queen or anything."

"Makes sense," he said, his voice gruff and serious.

"But then, a few years ago after we were able to visit and see Kerrtu, I guess we both changed our minds. We wanted children, and so we started trying." I swung the axe haphazardly at the tree, and it stuck into the bark as if it was a sheath which had been perfectly designed for the task of protecting the blade.

Memories of doctor's visits, nights holding my drugged-up wife as she cried, the overwhelming sense that I had failed.

Aspen grimaced as he took the axe out of the tree. "No offense, but I'm going to take this back. You were lucky the axe didn't bounce back and hit you in the eye."

I shrugged as I sank onto the grass, my arms leaning against my bent knees. The fight had gone out of me almost as quickly as it had come in.

"We've had two miscarriages in the last year alone," I said as I stared at the grass between my legs. I don't know what I was looking for. Memories? Answers? "And she only got pregnant because we tried fertility drugs."

Aspen dropped the axe a few feet away before he came and sat beside me, his leg stiff and requiring his hands to help move it into the right position. He exhaled slowly. "That's hard," he said with a nod. "Fertility drugs and hormones—not everyone, not every marriage, can handle that."

I looked up at him, suddenly realizing why the look in his eye had changed. "You've been there, haven't you?"

"More than once," he said with a nod. "And we didn't stop there. We looked at adoption which failed. We looked at surrogacy—I mean, even your mother volunteered."

My eyebrows shot up again. "That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen."

He offered a low, mirthless chuckle. "You can say that again. Apparently, your mother doesn't own her own body anymore."

I nodded, knowing all-too well what he meant. I couldn't imagine what Camille's advisors would say if she made the same offer. Well, assuming that it was even an option.

"We've had the same arguments with Camille's advisors," I admitted. "I mean, in reverse obviously. They say that there's no precedence for an heir who's born via surrogate. They don't even want to consider what it would do to the people's confidence in the crown. And as if that's not bad enough, the doctors say that they're not even sure that's a viable option without considering donations." I rubbed my eyes with my hands. "And if just having another woman give birth to our biological child is out of the question, I don't even want to think about what the advisors would say if we asked about donations."

I put a bitter sort of emphasis on the word donations, and it seemed that Aspen knew what I meant because just bobbed his head in understanding.

"It's not easy," he said as he turned an attempt at a smile of strength toward me like he was trying to offer me some shining beacon of hope in the midst of my despair. "There's something in our nature that makes us feel useless unless we can fix something, fight something, do something. And then, add the fact that you're supposed to be one of the most powerful people in the world, but you're still unable to fix it, fight it, or do it." He patted my back. "Well, that sounds a little bit like torture to me."

For some reason, I laughed. "Just a little bit?"

Aspen grinned though the smile didn't reach his eyes. "I wish I wasn't welcoming you to the club that no one wants to belong to," he said as if he would take this burden from me and place it on his own shoulders if he could.

I appreciated it.

"I just feel like there are some things we all take for granted in this world," I said as I reached down and plucked a blade of grass. I twisted it in my fingers like I had done as a kid. "Everyone thinks they're going to get married if they want to. They all think they're going to have kids if they want to."

Aspen's head bobbed in time with each of my statements. "So, what is someone supposed to do when suddenly they can't get married when they want to. What are they supposed to do when they want to have kids and can't?"

"Exactly," I admitted.

Aspen sighed as he looked down at his own pants and mindlessly brushed the wood shavings from them.

I didn't realize I'd left enough wood shavings to get them onto his uniform, and for a moment, I felt bad about that.

"One of my worst days with this all was when Lucy told me she wanted to give up," he admitted, his voice heavy and his face lined with pain. "And oddly enough, your sister found me."

I raised my head in surprise.

"I was looking for your dad's glasses after your mom's heart attack. We were all a little on edge, and there I was looking for the King's glasses, and completely unable to find them." He shrugged. "Turns out they weren't even where I was looking, but I just felt so useless and angry. I think I might have broken something accidentally if your sister hadn't snapped me back to attention."

A smile lifted the corner of his lip in memory. "She gave me the best gift I think anyone could have given me. She reminded me that I had been like a second father to the kids who grew up in the palace. She reminded me that although no one will ever call me Dad or Grandpa or whatever, that doesn't have to define me."

He turned his head so he could get a good glimpse in my direction. "I think you'll find that your sister would be the first to share her children with you."

I smiled at the thought.

"And I know it doesn't fix the problem of an heir," he said as a whisper of possibility came into his voice. "But from what your mother tells me, Queen Amberly wasn't ever supposed to bear a child. And your father turned out all right."

It wasn't something our family talked about much, but it had come up every so often. I nodded slowly, taking in the reminder.

"Just because I've made my peace with the fact that I'll never be anyone's Daddy doesn't mean you have to," he said with a smile. "Besides, I think you come from a line of rule-breakers long enough to remind you that if you want to change the rules you're playing with, you could likely do it."

I raised my eyebrows. "Are you suggesting that Camille and I change the laws so that we can adopt?"

"You'd be King of Illéa if your parents hadn't done something that seemed similarly impossible."

The thought rocked me back for a moment. He wasn't wrong.

That one decision to fight the law that only the firstborn male could inherit the throne had made both my and Eadlyn's lives possible.

"And your sister wouldn't be married to Eikko if she hadn't taken up that same torch for herself," he added with a satisfied smile. "And didn't you run away from home so you could just live your own life?"

A pang of guilt seared my heart. "My mother had a heart attack because I ran away from home," I admitted, embarrassed to find a tear welling up in my eye.

"Your mother's heart attack was brought on by many things: the stress of watching your father age beyond his years, the desire to shrink back into the shadows when the whole world wanted to see her shine, a daughter who thought she was meddlesome and domineering, a son who had plans to leave her far earlier than she ever could have desired, a country which wasn't responding at all like she imagined to the plans she'd had since before she got married, and her family had a history of heart problems which could be brought on by just breathing—all of that caught up to her, Ahren. It wasn't your fault."

No one had ever spelled it out for me like that before. Eadlyn had gotten closest, but still every time Mom wore a dress which even hinted at her open heart surgery scar, I felt deep and bitter shame pool in the pit of my stomach.

The ache lessened as General Leger patted my back again.

"Ahren?"

I looked up to find my mother walked toward me. She put a hand over her eyes to ward against the setting sun. "Ahren? Are you all right?"

I got to my feet and dusted off my pants. "I'm fine, Mom. General Leger and I just had a little chat."

"Oh!" she said as I helped Aspen up off the ground. "We just couldn't find you. Camille said she had a headache and needed to slip away."

I nodded, knowing that Camille's headache was likely an excuse to have a moment alone. "I should go check on her."

I turned back to the General who was leaning down to collect the axe off the ground. "Thanks, General—"

He turned an eyebrow toward me as I shook my head. "Thanks, Aspen."

He offered me a thin smile and an understanding nod. "You need to talk? You know where to find me."

I turned back to my mother who squinted as she watched General Leger head off to the gardener's shed. "What was that all about?" she asked as I came closer.

I sighed heavily as I studied her. She looked healthy enough, but then, none of us had expected her heart attack six years ago. "Mom, I—Camille and I—"

Her eyes showed instant concern. "Nothing's wrong with you two, is there?"

I shook my head. "Not the way you're thinking, but we've had something on our minds."

Her gaze softened into the empathy I'd always come to expect from my mother as she wrapped an arm around me and patted my back. "Why don't you tell me all about it while we walk back inside?"

I put my arm around her back and squeezed lightly. There was something comforting about my mother's loving support that almost brought me back to being a boy again. "Mom, Camille and I have been trying to have a baby, but—" I inhaled sharply, the wave of pain cresting over me again. I steeled myself against a tsunami, but this wave seemed to be more of a natural ebb and flow that drew back away the moment I continued. "Well, it hasn't gone very well so far."

"Oh, sweetheart," my mother breathed. "I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?"

I turned a sad smile to her. "I know it probably doesn't seem like it, but just having you here so that I can talk to you about all of this is good enough for me right now."

She offered me a pained smile as we kept walking into the house.

And I had to admit that General Leger was right. It was nice to know I didn't have to do any of this alone.


End file.
